Just Transition Requisites

Transition to a clean energy economy is the subject of 350Missoula’s current campaign .The following articles, documents, and websites provide information that describe requisites driving this campaign.

Megafires, wildfires over 100,000 acres, and the destruction caused by them is a serious and growing issue to our region. Our communities, homes, businesses and our very way of life are threatened. If we are going to make effective progress towards increasing fire resiliency, we must increase awareness and stimulate conversation about this important issue across all levels of society. Through education, we firmly believe we can change the way we receive fire and smoke.

“… how much more new digging and drilling can we do?
Here’s the answer: zero.…If we’re serious about preventing catastrophic warming, the new study shows, we can’t dig any new coal mines, drill any new fields, build any more pipelines. Not a single one. We’re done expanding the fossil fuel frontier. Our only hope is a swift, managed decline in the production of all carbon-based energy from the fields we’ve already put in production.”

“You’d find no scientist would disagree with the fact that a changing climate is and will continue to put people out of their homes,” said Greg Holland, a hurricane and climate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Holland said that far and away the most obvious reason for this is rising seas swallowing coastal zones, as in the case of Shishmaref. “As far as sea level rise is concerned, there’s zero doubt about it,” he said.

‘In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”’

“When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? …
“The climate movement made an enormous mistake. We focused all our attention on fossil fuels, when we should have been pointing to something much deeper: the basic logic of our economic operating system. After all, we’re only using fossil fuels in the first place to fuel the broader imperative of GDP growth.”

“Keeping fossil fuels in the ground and accelerating a just transition to a sustainable energy system remain essential in addressing the climate challenge. Despite the common aspirational goals agreed upon by nearly 200 countries at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, it is clear that climate activism still needs to be strengthened.”

“There is no longer an excuse for building new infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the future. The new iron law of energy development must be: if you wouldn’t want it in your backyard, then it doesn’t belong in anyone’s backyard. That applies equally to oil and gas pipelines; fracking in New Brunswick, Quebec and British Columbia; increased tanker traffic off our coasts; and to Canadian-owned mining projects the world over.

“Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday; or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons; or that dancing around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”? Why are these “solutions” not sufficient? But most importantly, what can be done instead to actually stop the murder of the planet?”

“Economics has much to say about assessing and managing the risks of climate change, and about how to design national and international responses for both the reduction of emissions and adaptation to the impacts that we can no longer avoid. If economics is used to design cost-effective policies, then taking action to tackle climate change will enable societies’ potential for well-being to increase much faster in the long run than without action; we can be ‘green’ and grow. Indeed, if we are not ‘green’, we will eventually undermine growth, however measured.”

Billed on YouTube as “The Most IMPORTANT Video You Will Ever See”, “Professor Bartlett often explained how sustainable growth is a contradiction. His view was based on the fact that a modest percentage growth will equate to huge escalations over relatively short periods of time”